Customer Loyalty and Retention

In the book titled, Double Digit Growth author Michael Treacy identifies a handful of factors that have been associated with double digit growth. One of the factors is customer retention. Probably, not a surprise to most of you. However, the question is how do you retain customers and which customers do you retain?

I, for example, tend to be brand loyal. For some unknown reason to me, I believe that if I purchase products of the same brand the products will be compatible with one another. Moreover, it’s my ridiculous belief that if I were to have a support issue, somewhere in the company’s CRM, I will be noted as a brand loyal customer thereby entitling me to preferential treatment or dispensation. Silly me!

In the past few months, I bought a HP Widescreen laptop model 9700 with all the bells and whistles. Recently, I noticed one the little rubber a foot on the bottom of the laptop is missing. I promptly called HP for a replacement little rubber foot. Go ahead and flip your laptop over and take look. All laptops have these little rubber feet.

Guess how much HP charged me for the replacement rubber feet. Go ahead… I want you to guess.

HP wanted $99.00 US dollars to replace those little rubber feet. Not the bottom of the computer. Just the little rubber feet.

Do you think I will ever buy another HP product? No way! Knowing myself, I now harbor the belief that HP couldn’t care one bit about customer retention. Gas is a deal at $4.25 US a gallon compared to the price of little rubber feet replacements.